10 amazing truths you already suspected

Did you already know? I bet you already knew. Or at the very least, had a sneaking suspicion…

1) The end is near-ish! Government overspending will be the death of us all! Massive, crushing debt will blot out the sun and ruin your lawn! Buy gold and hoard it in your small intestine for the End Times that are coming soon! The GOP and Glenn Beck hath spoken!

Yes, it’s the everyday puling of the Republican right, a common refrain about how the liberal gummint is dead-set on bankrupting the nation as fast as possible. And the Tea Party eats it up like the giant sourball of falsehood it very much is.

Ironic, then, how it’s actually the Tea Party-riffic red states that suck up far, far more in government handouts than the blue. Did you already know? I bet you did. Even more amusing is the inverse relationship: The more red/Republican a given state votes — and hence the more loudly it complains about government spending — the more it swallows federal handouts like Charlie Sheen inhaling Bolivia. It’s true. It’s also sort of amazing.

2) It all dovetails sweetly with the fact that the more morally righteous and fundamentally Christian a red state is, the higher its teen pregnancy rates, the sadder its abortion rates, the less it cares for its poor and its needy, the more awful its sex education, the less it contributes to the national dialogue and the more paranoid its gun-loving, Bible-misquoting, Fox News-adoring citizenry.

Does it matter? Nope. As evidenced by the last election, the Republicans know — and brilliantly leverage — a rather vile truism liberals cannot seem to grasp: When all is said and done, it pays to be a hypocrite.

3) Fox News makes you stupid. Fox News makes you stupid. Fox News viewers are the most misinformed about the world of any group next to Michele Bachmann’s closetful of pathetically maleducated demons. You already knew this, a new study confirms it, but perhaps repeating it over and over again will slowly embed this fact into the skulls of Murdoch’s army? Right. Probably not. But it’s still fun to say. Fox News makes you stupid. Fox News makes you stupid. The pope loves disco balls and ABBA (see below). Fox News makes you stupid.

4) America’s biggest problem? Nope, it isn’t guns, violence, Bieber haircuts or Fox News. It’s insufficient access to booze. True! Some days you have to walk, like, 20 feet to get to the nearest open vodka spigot. Precious handfuls of America’s college students have yet to binge-drink themselves into toxic comas. Thank God, then, Wal-Mart is testing some new wine-dispensing vending machines. Yes, indeed.

Because if there’s one thing you want to go with your new rifle and gallon drum of meth-making fertilizer, it’s a $2.99 magnum of Wal-Mart Sauv Blanc dumped out by a giant machine stationed next to the arcade game where you try to grab a creepy 25-cent Chinese-made stuffed animal with a huge metal claw. Fun for kids!

5) Only idiots care about great sex. Only people without a mad desire to be praised like puppies for their every spit and gurgle would ever want to screw like happy banshees and induce orgasms that make God’s toes curl. As for America’s “young, bright college students”? Well, they’d prefer a nice complement, maybe a good grade on a paper, over sex any day. Yay youth!

So suggests a weird and entirely useless new study, in which it is awkwardly proven that today’s Facebook-obsessed meta-narcissists are clearly not having enough slippery, mind-blowing orgasms that shatter their precious worldviews and make them taste the divine. If they were, they’d know: great sex is a stupendous compliment, perhaps the best one love, money or Wal-Mart Sauv Blanc can buy. Just ask the pope.

6) The pope! Right. Wouldn’t be a proper “10 Truths” list without a mention of the ever-quotable P. Benedict, always ready with a fine, hoary excuse for the gay porn palace that is the Catholic priesthood.

Benedict’s latest justification for much of the priestly pedophilia and sexual abuse of (recent) yore? It was the bell bottoms. The hot tubs. John Travolta. The rainbows and disco dancing and everyone snorting huge rails of cocaine off David Bowie’s eyebrows in Studio 54.

In other words, it was the ’70s! Everyone was doing the perverted sex thing. Promiscuity, adultery, maybe a little rape, kids fellating each other in public, the sexual revolution. Really, can you blame a lonely priest circa 1976 for wanting a piece of the hot, young disco action?

Why yes, Pope Benedict. You very much can.

7) Hi, CBS News! I am hereby hurling a giant crouton of disrespect in your direction for your recent, hugely irresponsible story about how those nefarious terrorists — the same masterminds who somehow haven’t been able to pull off a single stunt of any scale or relevance in America in 10 years — these monsters are right now scheming to spread all kinds of scary poisons all over … can you guess? America’s salad bars.

That’s right. According to your panicky, complete BS story, the twin towers were just a warm-up. The real action for modern terrorists will be trying to sicken handfuls of overweight Americans by way of spreading cyanide over the Salisbury steak at the Sizzler buffet. Note to CBS News and Al Queda: Have you seen the fried, mutilated garbage in most American food outlets these days? Have you ever eaten at Taco Bell? Honey, cyanide is the least of our worries.

8) Mmm, Taco Bell. The very name conjures images of tormented Chihuahuas, florescent orange liquids and steaming vats of a gnarled, meat-like paste that fills the gullets of gullible Americans who are addicted to sodium, corn syrup solids and, uh, “polysaccharide absorbed as glucose.”

What might surprise you is that someone is suing the folks at Taco Bell over the fact that their swill isn’t 100 percent real meat, as if they didn’t know. Hell, even the “real” meat isn’t real meat, what with the hormones and antibiotics and weak, corn-fed cows that taste like sadness. Taco Bell: Think Outside the Colorectal Cancer.

9) America’s favorite book? The Bible. The single tome that tops the bestseller list every year and is cited by all GOP hopefuls as their favoritest book ever next to “The Hungry Caterpillar” and “Curious George Disappears Into a Gay Pride Parade and Emerges Four Days Later Wearing Nothing But a Cock Ring and a Smile”? The Bible.

The book the vast majority of Americans know the least about, never fail to misinterpret their facts when referencing, generally haven’t actually read and largely haven’t the slightest clue what they’re talking about despite how they claim to set their wobbly moral compasses by it? One guess.

10) The end is near-ish! Totally not kidding this time! It’s just a few months away, May 21 to be exact, which gives you just enough time to drive around in a horrible little car with cute stickers all over it, never have sex and lose all your friends as you spread the dire word that, well, you’d better shape up and set things right before Jesus comes down, sees your fetish porn collection, reads your last Facebook update, scoffs mightily and blasts your poor soul to hell. Or maybe Orange County. Or John Boehner.

I am very disappointed in Georgeanne Croskey's recent announcement [that she will not seek re-election when her term runs out]. First, she was appointed to serve out Tom Woodhouse's term without any say by the people she is supposed to be representing. Second, she came to this appointment with no obvious knowledge of county issues, nor of the const […]

Here in Colorado, both marijuana and casino gambling are legal. I have no moral judgment on this, other than pot was more fun back when. Speaking of drugs, a clear 40 year-old memory sticks with me... Sitting in a Sausalito houseboat waiting to score some dope, and looking at the others waiting, I wanted badly […]

by Lylla Younes Data from a civil rights group shows that reports of hate incidents involving American mosques jumped sharply in 2015 and has remained at the same rate since — about once every three days.

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by Alec MacGillis The Baltimore City Council voted unanimously Monday to remove two monuments of the Civil War era, a double-equestrian sculpture of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and a statue of Roger Taney, the Supreme Court justice who authored the Dred Scott decision. Above, the empty pedestal after Taney was taken away. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images) W […]

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“How can the design of farms and farm buildings be beautiful, functional and express a sense of place?” This was the central question explored by Mark Hoare, Kim Wilkie and Stephanie Evans during their parallel session “Harmony Principles in Farm Architecture” at the Harmony in Food and Farming conference earlier in July. The post Farm Architecture: Form, Fu […]

Alnoor will help us understand the interplay between political organization, system thinking, storytelling, technology, and the decentralization of power. In a conversation spanning a wide range of topics including anarchism, collective organizing, local economies, psychedelics, and even spirituality, Ladha and Douglas Rushkoff underscore the multifaceted an […]

Repealing the Johnson Amendment would be a disaster for religion, turning many churches into political battlefields.Thousands of religious leaders have now signed a letter urging Congress not to take that step.

At the heart of Hulu’s new series lies an ancient story about two slave women. If The Handmaid’s Tale offers any sign, Margaret Atwood has read more of her Bible than many Christians. Superficially, Atwood’s dystopian novel is littered with biblical names … Continue reading →

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By Adi Chowdhury In the wake of last night’s snap election — which resulted in an elated Jeremy Corbyn and a rather miserable Theresa May — the Conservative party has lost a majority in the House of Common and now bestows a hung parliament upon the UK. However, in an unprecedented move, Conservative leader Theresa… Continue reading UK Prime Minister to Form […]

By Adi Chowdhury From the Catholic priest in China who can only stand by as government officials censor his lessons to fit convenient political agendas, to the Buddhists in Indonesia watching their temples going up in flames at the hands of local Islamists, to the young Muslim girl who has her hijab snatched away and… Continue reading It’s Ironic, But Only a […]

This marketing tactic is hugely dishonest, yes, but it's also very effective against the unwary. No wonder so many Christians use it so often in their evangelism efforts: we carry around in our heads a raft of cognitive biases that ensure that even the most skeptical of us can fall for bait-and-switch evangelism. Today I'll show you what this type […]

What angers me most about the horrible Christian movie I'm Not Ashamed is its absolutely shameless contortion of a child's brutal, senseless death to advance a very clear political agenda. Today I'll walk you through how that task was accomplished--and show you why we absolutely must reject it.

I wasn’t active in the skeptic movement long before I discovered how different my perspective on religion was from that of other atheists. In time I came to understand that people who have never been religious come to the subject as outsiders who cannot always sympathize with those who formerly were. But I most definitely […]

This summer I’ve been trying to work my way through outlining a book I’ve been wanting to write for several years now, but didn’t feel ready to begin. The biggest holdup, I think, was that I wasn’t sure which of two or three directions I wanted to go with the book. Truth be told, I […]

By Jeanna Bryner and Denise Chow On Monday, Aug. 21, the Great American Eclipse will give those in the United States a rare sight — the moon will slip in front of the sun, blocking the rays from hitting Earth and resulting in a gorgeous solar eclipse for those in the path of totality, from Oregon to South Carolina, and a partial one for those outside that pa […]

By David Montgomery and Manny Fernandez AUSTIN, Tex. — A bill to restrict which bathroom transgender people can use in public buildings and schools died in the Texas Legislature on Tuesday evening, a rare defeat for social conservatives in a state they usually dominate. The failure of the so-called bathroom bill at the end of a special legislative session wa […]

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Robert Sapolsky about his work with baboons, the opposition between reason and emotion, doubt, the evolution of the brain, the civilizing role of the frontal cortex, the illusion of free will, justice and vengeance, brain-machine interface, religion, drugs, and other topics.Robert Sapolsky is a […]

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This past summer I ran a Stoic School in Rome for three days (will do it again next year, so stay tuned…), during which I went through both the theory and practice of Stoicism. The goal was for the students... Read More ›

Adam Gopnik has recently published in The New Yorker an in-depth review of the recent book by Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. It actually refers both to Wright’s volume as well... Read More ›

By AstrejaOne thing I've noticed about Christians proselytizing online is that rather a lot of them try to come across as Scientists, with a capital S. In this context, one gets to hear all sorts of twisted misinterpretations of physics and biology. Not one of them seems to understand what the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics actually is, but it crops up an […]

Article from The Guardian, submitted by Jennifer ~ Religious belief widely viewed as safeguard against ‘grossly immoral conduct’, according to new researchAtheists are more easily suspected of evil deeds than Christians, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists – even by fellow atheists, according to the authors of a new study.The finding suggests that in an increasingl […]

The 'haul out' of Pacific walruses along the Alaska coast is the earliest known and comes as global temperatures and loss of sea ice near records. By Phil McKenna A remote barrier island off Alaska's northwest coast has been mobbed by thousands of Pacific walruses in recent weeks in the earliest known "haul out" for the species. Thei […]

The federal environmental impact statement moves the project ahead but cites concerns about effects on climate change, marine life and local communities. By Sabrina Shankman A proposal for the first oil and gas drilling in federal offshore waters of the Arctic took a step forward Thursday as regulators released a draft environmental impact statement, which r […]

There is NO EVIDENCE that the Bible is from or inspired by a God, or that either of these two man-made biblical scriptures -- foundational to Christianism -- is true: Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave is only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." NONE.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. ~Robert Ingersoll

If prayer actually worked, everyone would be a millionaire, nobody would ever get sick and die, and both football teams would always win. ~Ethan Winer

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. ~Voltaire

The strongly religious fear our capacity for moral reasoning that does not require a magical, invisible deity. They fear our ability to be ethical without the threat of hell or the reward of heaven. They fear that our allegiance is not to this or that country, or this or that prophet, or this or that guru, but to humanity as a whole. ~Phil Zuckerman

The idea that God could only forgive our sins by having his son tortured to death as a scapegoat is surely, from an objective point of view, a deeply unpleasant idea. If God wanted to forgive us our sins, why didn’t he just forgive them? Why did he have to have his son tortured? ~Richard Dawkins

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

It is the right of every rational adult to choose their time of death and that has NOTHING to do with how sick you are.~Exit International

All religions are lies and scams, and all believers are victims. ~David Silverman

We [atheists] have no martyrs, we have no saints. ~Christopher Hitchens

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion. ~Jon Stewart

My 12th year was my most Christian and most boring year in my life. ~Chuck Berry

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Christians don’t need to be born again, they need to grow up. ~John Shelby Spong

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. ~Arthur C. Clarke

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

The only true definition of an atheist: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in God or gods. ~Oxford English Dictionary

You have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Faith is just another word for gullibility.

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Resilience Tools (Basic)

Freethought/Stoics

The Wikipedia of Christian Terrorism (Link)

Books in the Freethinkers Library

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws… It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such.

I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? -Zora Neale Hurston

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. ~Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Founder

In the history of the world, the number of times a supernatural anything has been proven true is zero. Every god, ghost, spirit, devil, possession, and miracle ever claimed true is a lie. No exceptions. The number of times an atheistic (godless) argument has been proven wrong by a theistic argument is zero... In contrast, every time a theist-versus-atheist argument has been settled, an atheistic argument has won. This does not mean science is antireligion; it just means (or rather, strongly implies) religion is wrong... I challenge anyone to find any scientifically valid testable proof of anything supernatural, ever. If you can prove it, even once, I'll quit my job. I'm not nervous, as it has never been done in history, because it's ALL a lie. ~David Silverman, President

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman